View: A Third Force in Education

A third force in education could be a hybrid of public and private sectors. In this scheme, the state and local communities will provide the funding and school managers and communities will be responsible for delivering education.

The education crisis is rapidly moving towards a situation from where turning around will become hard for the policy makers as well as for society. Pakistan’s chances of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are zero. More than seven million children are out of school and those who are in school are getting substandard education. An assessment survey revealed that less than a third of the enrolled children can perform up to the grade level in which they study. Only 44 percent can do two-digit addition. About 68 percent mothers are illiterate. The survey found fundamental weaknesses in both public and private education systems (ASER, 2010).

The failure of the education sector in Pakistan is colossal and across the board. Not only have the government schools failed to provide education, the private sector is also constrained in terms of outreach and quality, except for a few hundred elite and expensive private schools overwhelmingly concentrated in the cities and towns.

Keeping in view the grossly weakened state in comparison to the society it governs and the fundamental weakness of the private sector, the only way forward seems to be constituting and establishing a third force in education. The third force must meet the following criteria to be relevant to our society: a) it must have vast outreach to be able to make use of the full strength and resources of society, and b) it should be grounded in the local context and conditions.